University College London

Founded in 1826, University College London (UCL) is a globally leading, multi-disciplinary, research-led university.

An innovative institution from the outset, UCL was the first university to admit women on an equal basis to men and the first to teach students purely on merit with no regard for ethnicity or religion. It was also the first to offer engineering, modern European languages and law as academic subjects.

Today, UCL has 22,000 students and 10,000 staff, including the largest professorial body in Europe. It counts 26 Nobel Prize winners and three Fields Medal recipients among its former staff and students.

Currently, UCL is fourth in the QS World University Rankings. It has an annual turnover in excess of £800m.

UCL alumni include Marie Stopes, Francis Crick, Mahatma Gandhi, Jonathan Dimbleby, Lord Woolf, Edwin Waterhouse, Alexander Graham Bell and members of the band Coldplay.

Why UCL is supporting the Big Innovation Centre

"UCL has always been an innovative institution. Unable to attract support from Parliament, the Crown or the Church of England, UCL was established as a joint stock company. It has since pioneered many academic disciplines, equal teaching for men and women and a host of initiatives to stimulate innovative ideas and novel mechanisms for transferring the benefits of those to wider audiences.
    
Modern-day UCL is a confident, enthusiastic community of enterprising researchers, educators and scholars, working together for the benefit of society.

But innovative structures, research centres, funding and the policies that govern them, all need to be nurtured and to evolve with time. As such, UCL sees the development of the Big Innovation Centre as an opportunity to work with companies and other higher education institutions to help form and shape the ideas that will further the innovation economy for the financial and social benefit of all.

UCL’s relationship with the Big Innovation Centre is managed through UCL Enterprise, which provides UCL’s structures engaging with business for commercial and societal benefit."

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